The Resurrection of God Incarnate

Book excerpt: Whether or not Jesus rose bodily from the dead remains perhaps the most critical and contentious issue in Christianity. Until now, argument has centred upon the veracity of explicit New Testament accounts of the events following Jesus's crucifixion, often ending in deadlock. In Richard Swinburne's new approach, though, ascertaining the probable truth of the Resurrection requires a much broader approach to the nature of God and to the life and teaching of Jesus. The Resurrection can only have occurred if God intervened in history to raise to life a man dead for thirty six hours. It is therefore crucial not only to weigh the evidence of natural theology for the existence of a God who has some reason so to intervene, but also to discover whether the life and teaching of Jesus show him to be uniquely the kind of person whom God would have raised. Swinburne argues that God has reason to interfere in history by becoming incarnate, and that it is highly improbable that we would find the evidence we do for the life and teaching of Jesus, as well as the evidence from witnesses to his empty tomb and later appearances, if Jesus was not God incarnate and did not rise from the dead. The Resurrection of God Incarnate offers a clear and penetrating new perspective on Christianity's central mystery. It will be of great interest to philosophers, theologians, and all those trying to discover the truth about the Christian religion.